Movie Review: Mission Impossible 3 (2006)

[Brian Fein]

Premise: A international trafficker attempts to steal and sell a bio-weapon when he is interrupted by an outside agency.

Rating: Much, MUCH better.  Finally.

The franchise finally graduated beyond dated facial closeups and slow-motion action sequences.  This is the movie I've been expecting.  Its about time.

One thing that stick me in the craw is that every movie in this series introduces new characters.  From Ethan's team, family, love interest, and villains, every character is new in each installment of this series except Ethan himself, and his "guy in the chair" played by Ving Rhames.

This movie, to me, was much less difficult to follow, fewer implied actions and fast-talking explanations.  More straightforward action and in-your-face stunts.  The movie bring you in with the timeline jumble, where the very first scene is chronologically at the end of the conflict.  I like this technique - it builds tension before you even know what's going on.

About halfway through the movie, I thought to myself - "hey no one has had a fake face on yet, maybe we've moved past that nonsense..."  Just as I said that, they show a scene where they create a fake face for Ethan to wear.  the fake face thing is an easy out of a plot sinkhole, but its becoming predictable.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the main bad guy in this film, which for me is a hardly-believable role for him based on other comedic roles which I've seen him play. I just can't picture him as a supervillain.  It was hard for me to take him seriously.

The biggest stunt in the movie, the "fulcrum" jump from one building to another, seems to be physically impossible to do in real life with the setup they showed on screen.  And with all the tech gizmos and gadgets that violate the laws of physics, he couldn't bring a suction cup with him to stop him from sliding down the roof?  Just could have been better thought out, I think.

In all I like this movie a lot more than the previous 2 Mission: Impossible installments.  We'll see how many new characters get introduced in the next film...

[Dave Gray]

As I've said before, this is the "Fast & Furious 4" of the franchise.  It changes the dymanic and this is where the series becomes something else.  The next movie, though, IMO, is the Fast 5, where it all comes together, the cast is solidified and new characters start to grow the team, and there is a wrinkle in the formula a little bit.

The fake face thing is pat of these movies.  It's part of the old show.  It's like not having cars in F&F.  Even though the plots sometimes progress past it, there will always be some element of fake faces, but they keep finding ways to make it interesting or funny.

I remember that the bomb in the head thing that happens in the first 5 minutes of the movie was pretty shocking for the time and made me think "oh shit...this is legit".

I really hope you like the next one.  ...not to build it up too much, but MI: Ghost Protocol is where the stunts start to make my stomach hurt, because it's all practically done and I have a healthy fear of heights.  I think the cast improves, too, the series starts to adopt modern blockbuster humor....it all comes together.